The report analyses data collected from Operators of Essential Services (OES) and from Digital Service Providers (DSP) identified in the European Union's Directive on Network and Information Security Systems (NIS Directive). The analysis seeks to understand whether those operators have invested their budgets differently over the past year in order to meet the new requirements set by the legislative text.

The report includes an analysis reaching more than 1000 operators across the 27 EU Member States. Related results show that the proportion of Information Technology (IT) budget dedicated to Information Security (IS) appears to be lower, compared to last year's findings, dropping from 7.7% to 6.7%.

These numbers should be conceived as a general overview of information security spending across a varied typology of strategic sectors. Accordingly, specific macroeconomic contingencies such as COVID19 may have influenced the average results.